Photograph Of Jesus ★★☆☆☆

Review of 'Photograph Of Jesus' which can be found here at Short Of The Week.

Length: 06:47

Directed by Laurie Hill

Genre: Documentary

Date: 2008

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Logline: A photo archive employee tells us about some of the unusual and impossible requests he’s heard.

This is an okay effort bar the uninteresting subject matter. The animation is fun and all but wasn't enough to captivate me I’m afraid. While I do appreciate the time and effort that goes into animation, it seems more style over substance in this case. There are a lot of repetitive images and while shelves upon shelves of folders may be interesting the first time (?) it does tend to wane forever more after that. There is a distinct music video feel to it and I kind of felt sorry for the person who spent all that time animating box files to create a visually uninteresting sequence. Ironically spelling out the word "Why".

I do emphasize with people who have to deal with the inane stupidity of the general public, but I can’t help but wish this film had investigated some of the strange and unusual things they had in the archive rather than the things they don’t. Dialogue is droll instead of entertaining. I'm not sure if the narrator, Matthew Butson, is an actor or a real life employee but he sounds genuine enough. Gags are limited to being visual and didn't make use of Butson to deliver any entertainment. The publics photo requests get less and less interesting and this is one occasion when the real life could have done with some fictional input. The pace drags as does some of the visual comedy and I feel it could have been half the length.

More irony concluding with the lines “You don’t know what you’re going to find next” is where I feel the film went wrong for me. Thematically, it seems to focus on other peoples stupidity. Perhaps the director/animator should have considered their own before spending a lot of time on something which has suffered from the moment of concept. (That’s a bit harsh isn’t it!)

Best Bit: The intro. Alas, it seemed so promising.

Worst Bit: Too long plus the missed opportunity to delve into a much more fascinating subject matter.

Final thought: Still sounds like a good job mind, that photo archive stuff.

Read a condensed review of this film on Twitter here.